The present invention concerns answering machine/voice mail technology and pertains particularly to outgoing message selection based on caller identification and time/date constraints.
The use of answering machines, and more recently voice mail has added a great amount of convenience to the problem of making connections between parties via telephone.
Typically, an answering machine or voice mail system provides an outgoing message to a caller. A caller confronted by an answering machine or voice mail outgoing message can choose to leave a message, call back at a later time and/or seek some other method of communication.
If there are multiple users of a single phone line, more sophisticated voice mail systems may allow for a caller to select a voice mail box for a particular user. The caller accessing such a voice mail box may hear an outgoing message for the voice mail box.